This is the second version of Albertine Sarrazin's best seller ,almost half a century after Guy Casaril's effort starring Marlène Jobert and Horst Buchholz;generally French first versions are filmed in black and white and their remake in color;oddly ,it's the other way about as far as l'Astragale is concerned .
An improvement over the first version? Yes and no.Guy Casaril's bad reputation went against him and tarnished his "L'Astragale " which was however hailed by the critics in 1969 and a big success which put Marlène Jobert on the map.
Brigitte Sy's version has a superb black and white cinematography ,at once poetic (looking on the side of the thirties Réalisme Poétique) and realist (a more modern treatment ,no dramatization,restrained performances);the same goes for the script: lines are ,in turn, Parisian slang ,or very mannered sentences ,with well -chosen vocabulary ,which makes sense ,for Sarrazin had her "Baccalaureat" (high school diploma,which was not usual at the time,mainly for a girl):there was a gap between her and her uneducated circle .
As far as acting is concerned , Leïla Behkti does not make you forget Marlène Jobert ;Reta Kateb is miscast as Julien .Their love story - which was to end tragically in 1967 when Albertine died because of negligence in a hospital- does not convince.
Both versions forget one vital point:Sarrazin's background ,which looks like a melodrama;a voice over tells us about the judge's verdict ,and a small flashback and that's it.Sarrazin's defiant attitude,against the bourgeois society (her adoptive father was a M.O.),against sexual repression (she dared to kiss a girl on the mouth in prison),the first woman who told her prostitution years ,all this is passed over in silence in Casaril's and Sy' s efforts.To follow the book like a dog (=to begin with Albertine's escape from jail and her meeting with Julien) is not enough when you deal with a character with a racy past.
Unlike Casaril's ,Sy's film went unnoticed ;Sarrazin's book was no longer widely talked about like in the rebellious times of the late sixties .The writer's readers can have a look ,it is not a bad movie,but the others may find it a little old -fashioned .
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